Getting from thinking to working: Good practices in engagement & influencing

By Emily Hayter and Jojoh Faal. Originally published March 31, 2026 by the Land Portal Foundation. Republished from the original article under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0.

Related project: The Land Facility.

Often, when we talk about ‘policy influence’, what we’re really talking about isn’t influencing the policy statement or document at all. The policy itself might be perfectly fine – but it might have very little political will, a non-existent budget, or be ignored by everyone who matters. Or maybe it is being implemented, but in a fragmented landscape in which key actors are not talking to each other or have no meaningful participation. Sometimes, the policy doesn’t even exist yet, and the influencing is about proving that the problem is, in fact, a problem. 

We know this issue is timely for the land sector: at the recent 5th International Land Management Conference exploring the political economy of land governance, there was a call for the land sector professionals to be ‘more skilful, creative and persuasive in getting into the minds of the people [whose behaviour] we want to change’. Strategic, carefully chosen and well-timed policy engagement is a critical element of ‘thinking and working politically’.

At the Land Facility Decision Support Unit, we recently reviewed dozens of policy engagement and influencing examples across a wide range of sectors and contexts. What we found was a rich body of experience and research showing how many different practitioners have grappled with this challenge.  We found many good practices, a few unique gems and distilled them into tips and tactics. The resulting ‘Good Practices for Policy Engagement and Influencing’ resource is a glimpse into what we learnt, as well as our favourite examples from around the world¹.

Here’s what we found

In this blog, we outline some of the main themes we saw and heard about when exploring policy influence efforts:

• Clarity on influencing and engagement goals does enable strategic selection of influencing approaches. This means having specific policy influence goals in mind and specific stakeholders to target in order to nudge change along identified pathways. Projects using Political Economy Analysis (PEA) will have carried out a stakeholder analysis, identified key barriers and outlined opportunities for change appropriate to the given moment. From there, it should be possible to identify a clear purpose for influencing and engagement efforts: is it behaviour change? An update to a policymaking process or procedure? A change in the law? Where there’s no clear purpose for influencing, activities can be diffused and lacking in strategic intent.
• Building specific operational elements into a project’s earliest design stages can set it up well for policy engagement and influencing. In addition to PEA capabilities, projects are likely to need good communications and facilitation capabilities within the team. An initial timescale, planning and reporting schedule needs to be established with the funder that provides enough flexibility to adapt quickly to policy processes which are complex, fast-changing and not linear. Without these foundational aspects built into project design from the inception period, influencing efforts can be constrained before they begin.
• Politics really is everywhere, including in the so-called ‘technical’ or ‘bureaucratic’ layer of government. Organisational politics are an important element of any effort to influence policy and may reveal different entry points to those suggested by the wider/macro context. Targeting engagement efforts at specific entry points within an organisation—which department in the ministry, which directors, which working group/committee is an important element of navigating this politics. These might not be the most obvious ones, and provide alternative or less obvious routes to influence that hadn’t been anticipated.
• The nuts-and-bolts of the policymaking process matter. Some of the great stories we read about policy influence successes demonstrated minute, detailed knowledge of policy processes and procedures—which document needed an added line, which meeting needed an extra agenda item, which event needed an additional stakeholder invited. Knowledge of the machinery of the policymaking and decision-making process to be influenced (both formal and informal) is key. Using champions is a common approach, but leaving influencing efforts too dependent on individuals without attention to the processes they are embedded within can also be a risk.
• Facilitation is key to building the kind of trusted relationships that lead to meaningful multistakeholder collaboration. Multi-stakeholder relationships, alliances and coalitions are critical to influencing policy. But high quality, carefully planned facilitation, with attention to participatory methods and adult learning principles, can be the difference between tokenistic efforts and real, meaningful engagement. Yet, it’s often forgotten. In reality, stakeholders can be extremely sensitive to how the agenda for discussion is set, who is delivering the messages, in what tone, are they credible and why, how the discussion was planned and the communication around it before the meeting or event. It all matters, because…
• Good communications matter. And like good facilitation, it takes time, money and expertise to do well. It’s common for projects to focus on the technical quality of their work and forget the communications quality—which, in many cases, can make all the difference between achieving policy influence or not. Many an influencing effort has failed by treating communications as an afterthought or underestimating the expertise and resource required to do it well.
• The arc of influence is long and twisty. As Catherine Boone told us at the latest ILM conference in her ‘story in four acts’ of land registration in Cote d’Ivoire, Enrique Mendizabal outlined in his twenty-year review of ‘playing the long game’ in Peru and CIFOR-ICRAF show in their experience influencing forestry policy in Ethiopia: the arc of change is long. It’s also full of surprises, twists and turns—especially around elections and other transitions. Sometimes, the end and the beginning are blurred, and the influencing process can often feel like ‘one step forward/two steps back’. 

In closing

One of the most fundamental good practices is that effective policy engagement starts with an understanding of the context you’re working in and the space for change. So, investing in TWP capacity from the project design stages, and—crucially—choosing policy influence approaches and activities in response to PEA insights, enables adaptation of these good practices to specific sectors and contexts. 

There’s a lot of evidence out there about policy engagement approaches and an opportunity to get better at using it. Policy engagement good practices are well established and cross sectoral. The same common learning points come up repeatedly, whether it’s land governance, nutrition, sexual health or education. Responding to these practices will require getting better at learning from across different sectors and recognising common governance issues, and solutions, when we see them.